There’s probably a subtle difference between “exploiting yourself” and getting most of the money after OF fees, vs getting paid essentially minimum wage for a shoot which then gets repeatedly repackaged and distributed for the company that makes way more money off it than you ever did. Which on one hand is essentially the same as being any other actress, but also not remotely the same considering the material, and how many women regret being convinced to take part in it because of exposure and social backlash.

Would you like to shoot porn when someone you love and trust or a random person?

You underestimate the power of thirst

It’s just 100k people paying 10 bucks each. It sounds like a lot of money but when you think about the numbers involved it gets really quite reasonable for someone in her position to do

The American dream, when money matters more than morality.

Marketing and promotion.

Crybaby squat cobbler can pay in spades.

Marketing, promotion, quality content generation - which in itself is a bucket load of work.

You’ve got actual production work, setting up a decent lighting/camera/sound system for your content, preparing everything you need to film or run a quality live stream. Post production, editing takes longer than people think.

But pre-production, there’s work to do on yourself, grooming and preparing physically, especially if you are going to be getting into anything fetish related, it adds another level of preparation (and possibly an extra level to post production clean up)

It’s also not something you can always compartmentalise, I have a friend who does some generic feet stuff, she had to quit swimming and change her entire gym routine to allow herself to shower at home, because catching athletes foot meant she’d loose income. She has to choose her socks and shoes based on protecting the physical appearance of her feet. She can’t just chuck on some thongs (flip flops) in summer because her clientele don’t like the tan lines and are vocal about it.

PR is important, you need to have time to engage with the audience, reply to messages and maintain the illusion of the parasocial relationship, to keep your subscribers keen. It can take easily take an hour a day to do if you have large enough fan base and want to maintain it.

There’s a lot to like about the “person next door” charm of a low budget, low effort approach to nudes and clips, but that’s what most people on OF are already doing, so if you want real money you have to set yourself apart from that.